More stuff to consider about Bradley’s on-campus home game

Kirk Wessler

Saturday

Jul 30, 2011 at 12:01 AMJul 30, 2011 at 3:31 PM

It’s really no big deal, but it appears Bradley has been violating NCAA rule 17.3.5.3(g) for more than a decade. Adopted in 1999, the rule stipulates that public exhibitions by Division I men’s basketball teams be “played in the arena in which the member institution regularly plays its home contests.” Well. Since December 1982, Bradley [...]

It’s really no big deal, but it appears Bradley has been violating NCAA rule 17.3.5.3(g) for more than a decade. Adopted in 1999, the rule stipulates that public exhibitions by Division I men’s basketball teams be “played in the arena in which the member institution regularly plays its home contests.”

Well. Since December 1982, Bradley has played all but one of its home contests at Carver Arena in downtown Peoria. Except for 2008 and 2009, though, the Braves have played an exhibition on campus, at either the late great Robertson Field House or the new Renaissance Coliseum, every year since 17.3.5.3(g) became effective in August 2000. And a lot of years before that, too.

The violation was inadvertent; the kind of thing that happens easily and often with an ever-changing rule book that numbers 444 pages. Compliance with the rule was one of the reasons BU athletics director Michael Cross cited for scheduling a regular-season game at the Ren Col this season.

I’m still not buying.

My colleague Dave Reynolds and I consulted with NCAA staffers. We wanted to know how the NCAA defines the phrase “regularly plays.” One game a year? One game a decade? What, exactly? It should come as no surprise that there’s no “exactly” to the interpretation. We were pointed to another rule designed to prevent a team from playing NCAA tournament games on courts where it regularly plays. A team can play up to three regular-season games on a court without jeopardizing its chance to play a tournament game there. Extrapolate to 17.3.5.3(g): One game does not constitute “regularly plays.” On the other hand, we were told NCAA personnel would “review their entire schedule” and “work with them” – “them” meaning the member institution – to make a final determination on what was kosher. And when I spoke this week with BU senior associate athletics director Craig Dahlquist, a former compliance guru, he was confident playing a home game at Ren Col every season would satisfy the definition of “regularly plays.”

Thing is, I’m not sure even that’s necessary. We were told by the NCAA that a member institution “can always apply for an exception.” Of course, the NCAA doesn’t have to grant an exception. (I’m tempted to say it’s hard to believe the NCAA would tell a school that its team could not play an exhibition on its own campus, but I’ve seen the NCAA apply rules in strange ways.) Still, this one should qualify as a no-brainer. The fact that Bradley didn’t bother to apply for such an exception, once it discovered the rule, indicates the real motive is to put a regular-season game in the Ren Col. So please don’t buy the “NCAA rules say we have to do this” excuse. It’s pretty flimsy.

All that said, and contrary to what some unhappy fans seem to believe, the more I look into this decision, the more convinced I become that Bradley isn’t doing this for money – at least not in the short term. I just don’t see where BU is going to make much, if any, profit on this game with SEMO. As I wrote in my newspaper column last week: If Bradley charges $25 a head for 3,000 general-public tickets, plus a buck apiece for 1,200 students, that’s $76,200, which barely covers the reported $70,000 cash guarantee for SEMO to visit. Trouble is, I don’t think BU can get $25 a ticket for this game. The highest-priced single-game ticket at Carver Arena is $20 ($22 for the game with arch-rival ISU). On the 16-game Carver Arena season-ticket package, the highest-priced seats calculate to $23.43 per game. So it’s more likely the SEMO game at Ren Col would have to be priced at $20, maybe less. Bradley does own the concessions on campus, but even if the per capita expenditure for a full house is $5 (doubtful without beer sales), that’s only $21,000.

There’s simply very little financial profit on this game.

Meanwhile, the only way Bradley loses money on an extra game at Carver Arena is by not increasing the cost of a season ticket.

Bradley doesn’t reveal ticket revenue, but the season-ticket base at Carver Arena has held fairly steady in the neighborhood of 7,500 for many years. Those tickets are spread over five prices – Club ($375 for the season), Priority I ($300), Priority II ($250), Priority III ($150) and Priority IV ($100). Priority II is the middle price, and calculates to $15.62 per game over a 16-date schedule. In round numbers, 7,500 tickets at an average of $15 comes out to $112,500 income per game.

Multiple sources with knowledge of Bradley’s contracts with the Peoria Civic Center over the years put the university’s per-game rent at a bit less than $20,000, although the figure can creep over that with big crowds. The Civic Center gets a cut of single-game ticket sales. Bradley reportedly does not get a share of Carver Arena concessions or parking.

If Bradley were to play SEMO downtown, single-game sales would be minimal. But subtracting the $70,000 guarantee and less than $20,000 rent from the base ticket income, BU is still more than $20,000 to the good.

The problem is that season-ticket prices are set before the schedule. If Bradley sells $1.5 million in season tickets, that revenue base is the same whether the Braves play 12 home games or 18. Obviously, the profit margin diminishes if more games are added. So, if the opportunity comes along to play an extra home game, that cuts into profit.

Bradley is selling the SEMO game at Ren Col as “an extra home game.” And it is. But it didn’t have to be. Bradley’s objective this season was to increase the number of home games. Knowing that, the price of the season-ticket package could have been increased accordingly. Obviously, after the sliding fortunes of the team the past five seasons, raising prices might not have been wise. On the other hand, an explanation that the increase was due to an extra game on the schedule is easily saleable. And the fact is, on a base of 7,500 season tickets, an increase of $10 per ticket would yield $75,000.

Maybe long-term, a bigger dollar payoff looms, particularly if BU can sell all those Renaissance PSO’s. But I don’t see it.

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